“One can't write a weird story of real power without perfect psychological detachment from the human scene, and a magic prism of imagination which suffuses them and style alike with that grotesquerie and disquieting distortion characteristic of morbid vision. Only a cynic can create horror—for behind every masterpiece of the sort must reside a driving daemonic force that despises the human race and its illusions, and longs to pull them to pieces and mock them.”

Letter to Weird Tales editor Edwin Baird printed in Weird Tales 3, no. 3 (March 1924), pp. 89-92. Quoted in Lord of a Visible World: An Autobiography in Letters edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 122
Non-Fiction, Letters

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "One can't write a weird story of real power without perfect psychological detachment from the human scene, and a magic …" by H.P. Lovecraft?
H.P. Lovecraft photo
H.P. Lovecraft 203
American author 1890–1937

Related quotes

Richard Dawkins photo
Marlene Dietrich photo
Gene Roddenberry photo

“We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.”

Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) American television screenwriter and producer

As quoted in Can A Smart Person Believe in God? (2004) by Michael Guillen, Ch. 7 : Hope Springs Eternal, p. 90

John Gray photo

“Human beings act, certainly. But none of them knows why they act as they do. There is a scattering of facts, which can be known and reported. Beyond these facts are the stories that are told. Human beings may behave like puppets, but no one is pulling the strings.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

In The Puppet Theatre: Puppetry, Conspiracy and Ouija Boards (p. 136)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

Roberto Mangabeira Unger photo
Karl Marx photo

“Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 2, pg. 49.
(Buch I) (1867)

Antoine François Prévost photo

“One cannot reflect for long on moral precepts without being astonished at seeing them, at one and the same time, revered and neglected, and without wondering what could be the reason for this vagary of the human heart, whereby it clings to principles of goodness and perfection from which it deviates in practice.”

Antoine François Prévost (1697–1763) French novelist

On ne peut réfléchir sur les precepts de la morale sans être étonné de les voir tout à la fois estimés et négligés; et l'on se demande la raison de cette bizarrerie du cœur humain, qui lui fait goûter des idées de bien et de perfection dont il s'éloigne dans la pratique.
Avis de l'auteur, pp. 30-31; translation p. 4.
L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731)

Aron Ra photo
Tanith Lee photo
Barbara Hepworth photo

Related topics